Categorie: Times

An alliance of 35 countries has finished laying the groundwork for one of humanity’s most ambitious experiments – to harness nearly unlimited amounts of energy by creating ‘small stars’ on Earth.

The extreme heat and gravity inside the core of the Sun and other stars make hydrogen atoms collide and fuse into heavier helium atoms, releasing tremendous amounts of energy in the process. Scientists want to replicate a similar mechanism on Earth in order to generate energy that will be efficient, renewable and carbon emission-free, so it will not cause climate change.

Moreover, controlled fusion reactions are projected to create four million times more energy than the burning of coal, oil or gas, and four times as much as nuclear power plants. However, the design of a large-scale fusion device requires immense resources, so a decade ago 35 countries combined their efforts to build the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). The reactor is being constructed outside the Cadarache research center in southern France, and the EU, the US, Russia, India, South Korea and Japan are among the participants in the ambitious project.

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Fusion is facilitated by high temperature, which triggers the high-energy collision of the atoms, and dense plasma, which makes such collision more likely. To control the reaction, the scientists are planning to build a tokamak, an experimental doughnut-shaped vessel-like device, capable of confining and controlling the ultra-hot plasma with powerful magnets. The idea of tokamaks was suggested by the Soviet physicists in the 1950s, and the first workable small-scale tokamaks were designed by a team led by Lev Artsimovich in the late 1960s.

The workers at the ITER paved the way for the installation of a tokamak this week when they set up an Indian-built cryostat base and its lower cylinder. Once fully completed, it will be a huge 3,085-ton stainless steel vacuum-pressure chamber needed to maintain an ultra-cool environment for tokamak’s magnets. This will help the device to generate a magnetic field powerful enough to contain plasma that will reach up to 150 million degrees Celsius, about 10 times hotter than in the Sun’s core.

The New York Times casually acknowledged that it sends major scoops to the US government before publication, to make sure “national security officials” have “no concerns.”

The New York Times has publicly acknowledged that it sends some of its stories to the US government for approval from “national security officials” before publication.

This confirms what veteran New York Times correspondents like James Risen have said:

The American newspaper of record regularly collaborates with the US government, suppressing reporting that top officials don’t want made public.

On June 15, the Times reported that the US government is escalating its cyber attacks on Russia’s power grid. According to the article, “the Trump administration is using new authorities to deploy cybertools more aggressively,” as part of a larger “digital Cold War between Washington and Moscow.”

In response to the report, Donald Trump attacked the Times on Twitter, calling the article “a virtual act of Treason.”

The New York Times PR office replied to Trump from its official Twitter account, defending the story and noting that it had, in fact, been cleared with the US government before being printed.

“Accusing the press of treason is dangerous,” the Times communications team said.

“We described the article to the government before publication.”

“As our story notes, President Trump’s own national security officials said there were no concerns,” the Times added.

Indeed, the Times report on the escalating American cyber attacks against Russia is attributed to “current and former [US] government officials.” The scoop in fact came from these apparatchiks, not from a leak or the dogged investigation of an intrepid reporter.

After years of kicking and screaming, corporate executives have finally released pay data on what their CEO makes versus their median worker.

Unsurprisingly, the gap is obscene. The average chief executive of an S&P 500 company earned 287 times more than their median employee last year, according to an analysis of the new federal data released Tuesday by the AFL-CIO labor federation. America’s CEOs earned a staggering $14.5 million in 2018, on average, compared to the average $39,888 that rank-and-file workers made. And CEOs got a $500,000 bump compared to the previous year, while the average US worker barely got more than $1,000.

This is the first year in which all public companies were required to disclose CEO-to-workers pay ratios in filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Before, companies only needed to report compensation for their top executives.

The new disclosures — largely opposed by corporate America — are part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010. The purpose is to provide shareholders with more information to judge corporate behavior — and to shame executives for their excessive pay.

Chief executives at America’s largest companies don’t get paid the way the average worker does. Beyond a set salary, CEOs’ compensation packages include other forms of income, such as bonuses, company stock options, and long-term incentive payouts, which can vary based on performance and the status of the stock market.

The new analysis relies on the most conservative measure of CEO pay, based on the value of stock options when they were awarded to executives, not when they were cashed out.

Companies that rely on low-wage, part-time workers were among those with the largest pay disparities. Tesla had the most shocking one: Elon Musk made 40,668 times more money than the median Tesla employee. Among the largest US companies, the clothing brand Gap had the largest disparity. CEO Arthur Peck made 3,566 times more than the median company employee, who only made about $5,800. McDonald’s, Foot Locker, and Estee Lauder reported jaw-dropping pay gaps, too.

Here are the top ten companies in the S&P 500 with the largest pay ratios:

The US has threatened to stage an attack and blame it on Iran over and over in the last few years. Don’t let a war based on false pretenses happen again. Please share this video.

TRANSCRIPT

1) PATRICK CLAWSON ON “CRISIS INITIATION”

CLAWSON: I frankly think that crisis initiation is really tough and it’s very hard for me to see how the United States president can get us to war with Iran. Which leads me to conclude that if in fact compromise is not coming, that the traditional way of America gets to war is what would be best for US interests.

Some people might think that Mr. Roosevelt wanted to get us into World War II. As David mentioned, you may recall we had to wait for Pearl Harbor. Some people might think Mr. Wilson wanted to get us into World War I. You may recall he had to wait for the Lusitania episode. Some people might think that Mr. Johnston wanted to send troops to Vietnam. You may recall they had to wait for the Gulf of Tonkin episode. We didn’t go to war with Spain until the USS Maine exploded. And may I point out that Mr. Lincoln did not feel he could call out the federal army until Fort Sumter was attacked, which is why he ordered the commander at Fort Sumter to do exactly that thing would the South Carolinians had said would cause an attack.

So if in fact the Iranians aren’t going to compromise, it would be best if somebody else started the war.

[…]

I would just like to suggest that one can combine other means of pressure with

sanctions. I mentioned that explosion on August 17th. We could step up the pressure. I mean, look people, Iranian submarines periodically go down. Someday one of them might not come up. Who would know why? We can do a variety of things if we wish to increase the pressure. I’m not advocating that, but I’m just suggesting that this is not an either-or proposition of,

And there it is. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been charged by the Trump administration’s Justice Department with 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act, carrying a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison. Exactly as Assange and his defenders have been warning would happen for nearly a decade.

The indictment, like the one which preceded it last month with Assange’s arrest, is completely fraudulent, as it charges Assange with “crimes” that are indistinguishable from conventional journalistic practices. The charges are based on the same exact evidence which was available to the Obama administration, which as journalist Glenn Greenwald noted last year declined to prosecute Assange citing fear of destroying press freedoms.

Hanna Bloch-Wehba, an associate professor at Drexel University’s Thomas R. Kline School of Law, has called the indictment “a worst-case, nightmare, mayday scenario for First Amendment enthusiasts.” Bloch-Wehba explains that that the indictment’s “theories for liability rest heavily on Assange’s relationship with Manning and his tendency to encourage Manning to continue to bring WikiLeaks material” in a way that “is not readily distinguishable from many reporter-source relationships cultivated over a period of time.”

One of the versions of the New York Times‘ report on the new Assange indictment, which has since been edited out but has been preserved here in a quote by Slate, said that “officials would not engage with questions about how the actions they said were felonies by Mr. Assange differed from ordinary investigative journalism. Notably, The New York Times, among many other news organizations, obtained precisely the same archives of documents from WikiLeaks, without authorization from the government.”

Press freedom organizations have been condemning these new espionage charges in stark and unequivocal language.

“Put simply, these unprecedented charges against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks are the most significant and terrifying threat to the First Amendment in the 21st century,” reads a statement by Freedom of the Press Foundation Executive Director Trevor Timm. “The Trump administration is moving to explicitly criminalize national security journalism,

The New York Times continues to descend further into spewing fiction masquerading as news. Its most recent analysis challenges Judith Miller‘s delusional screed about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction as sheer nonsense. Evidently the Times has a propensity for disgracing itself. Now the newspaper’s latest low is William Broad’s essay, “Your 5G Phone Won’t Hurt You But Russia Wants You to Think Otherwise,” touting a wild conspiracy theory that 5G technology’s severe risks to human health and the environment is a covert Russian plot intended to sow confusion into the minds of the American public.

As a patriotic loyalist of Russo-paranoia, Broad has dreamed up a hallucination that Russia is preparing to outpace the US’s strategy to dominate the global “internet of everything” in the race to launch 5G technology globally. Aside from Broad’s otherwise corporate friendly stances supporting hydrofracking, genetically modified foods, and the myth that vaccines do not contribute to neurological disorders, he has produced some excellent work about Yoga culture and North Korea. Yet these are hardly topics that would enable a person to speak intelligently about electromagnetic frequency’s (EMFs) biomolecular effects on living organisms.

Seen in its context, the Time’s article was timely. It was published just days before the National Day of Action to Halt 5G on May 15th. The event was launched by Americans for Responsible Technology and has earned the support of nearly one hundred organizations including the Environmental Health Trust, the EMF Safety Network, Parents for Safe Technology, Wireless Radiation Education and Defense, among others. Since the telecom industry and FCC have no viable science to support their claims, through the mouthpiece of the Times it has found a voice to further fuel the nation’s Russia mania.

Broad argues there is no scientific support for 5G signals contributing to brain tumors, infertility, autism, heart tumors and Alzheimer’s disease. Although the research may arguably offer less than 100 percent certainty, the scientific evidence unquestionably confirms that 5G is assuredly unsafe. Persons already suffering from electromagnetic sensivities will have no means of escape. And tens of thousands of scientists and medical experts agree. Contrast this with the Europa EM-EMF guideline that found “strong evidence that long-term exposure to certain EMFs is a risk factor for diseases such as certain cancers,

On the eve of the May 15th 5G Day of Action, the first national campaign to push back against the unchecked deployment of 5G-ready small cell infrastructure, the New York Times has published a shameful and wildly inaccurate hit piece asserting that opponents of 5G are being unwittingly manipulated by Russia.

The article, “Your 5G Phone Won’t Hurt You. But Russia Wants You to Think Otherwise,” focuses exclusively on a television network most people have never heard of – RT America – and argues that the tiny network, controlled by the Russian government, is the sole driving force behind the growing public opposition to 5G.

The Times cleverly conflates 5G-enabled smart phones with 5G small cell antennas, and fails to note that RT America is just one of many media outlets that are covering the controversy over 5G antenna deployment, including Fox News and CNN.

It also neglects to mention the hundreds of recently published, peer-reviewed, independent scientific studies from highly credible academic institutions and our own National Institutes of Health that demonstrate biological harm, including cancer, from exposure to RF microwave radiation. A listing of some of the most recent studies is located here.

Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg welcomes New York Times CEO Mark Thompson at a recent announcement of their 5G joint venture.

Although the Times acknowledges its investment in a 5G joint venture with the telecom giant Verizon, it fails to mention another clear conflict of interest: the pages of the Times are filled with full-page color ads for wireless companies like Verizon which stand to make billions from new services made possible by the deployment of 5G-enabled small cell antennas on virtually every block of every street in America.

In the article, the Times attempts to disparage a highly credible academic researcher and medical professional with no financial stake in the debate, while quoting so-called “experts” with ties to industry but no credentials or experience in public health. Without any evidence, the Times smugly concludes that there is absolutely no risk related to 5G.

This entire affair of desperately trying to paint Trump in league with Putin to defeat Hillary is beyond any comprehension. Not a single left-wing press from the New York Times to CNN will ever report the truth that the release of Hillary’s emails NEVER involved altered or forged documents. They were all REAL! So this entire conspiracy they are so desperate to create against Trump is astonishing. I would agree if there was any proof that the release of the emails was a fraud or fake and they traced to Putin. To paint Trump in a conspiracy for releasing emails that exposed the truth behind Hillary should warrant us sending a thank you card to Putin if he was ever actually involved.

I cannot imagine how unethical wand intentionally misleading the New York Times actions were by reporting their latest questionable piece with a bold headline: “F.B.I. Opened Inquiry Into Whether Trump Was Secretly Working on Behalf of Russia.” They claimed that after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, the feds began investigating whether the President was an intelligence threat. This simply says that some people in the FBI tried to use their power to investigate and were most likely politically motivated. They did not claim Trump was such an agent, only that they investigated to see if he was. This suspicion of an anti-Trump political member of the FBI in the Deep State emerged after Trump complained about Comey to Russian diplomats and then told NBC’s Lester Holt that he had the “Russia thing” in mind when he axed the director. Even the Russian Dossiers on Trump ended up being funded by Hillary to smear her opponent.

For the record, our DIRECT SOURCES from inside the FBI are really disgusted with this entire affair and believe that Comey and crew have done serious harm to the image and independence of the FBI. They used the agency for political purposes and have dragged its image into the mud. The New York Times nor CNN would ever print such a posture for they want to paint the FBI as 110% behind Comey and against Trump. They are contributing to the collapse in fair and trust in government with long-term implications to shift the financial capital from the USA to China post-2032.

So, by starving the beast, I at least ensure they’re not squandering my money.

But I think it’s ridiculous that this government posturing is financially crippling the 800,000 government workers (and millions of contractors) who are now out of work – or being forced to work without pay. To be fair, last night the president signed a law guaranteeing they would be paid for past work – a month into this fiasco. It’s a step in the right direction, as there’s a word for forcing people to work without pay – slavery.

But at its core, this whole shutdown comes down to a disagreement over $5 billion. That is how much money Trump wants to build the border wall between the US and Mexico. And Congress refuses to fund it.

Granted, that’s a lot of money to you and me. And it should be a lot of money to the government, too.

But the government is almost $22 TRILLION in debt and adding another trillion every single year.

We are talking about a fight over an expenditure that amounts to .02% of the total national debt.

RT CrossTalk host Peter Lavelle and The Duran’s Alex Christoforou take a quick look at the New York Times hit piece citing anonymous sources, with information that the U.S. President dared to question NATO’s viability.

The New York Times scored a serious scoop when it revealed on Monday that President Trump had questioned in governmental conversations—on more than one occasion, apparently—America’s membership in NATO. Unfortunately the paper then slipped into its typical mode of nostrum journalism. My Webster’s New World Dictionary defines “nostrum” as “quack medicine” entailing “exaggerated claims.” Here we had quack journalism executed in behalf of quack diplomacy.

The central exaggerated claim is contained in the first sentence, in which it is averred that NATO had “deterred Soviet and Russian aggression for 70 years.” This is wrong, as can be seen through just a spare amount of history.

True, NATO saved Europe from the menace of Russian Bolshevism. But it did so not over 70 years but over 40 years—from 1949 to 1989. That’s when the Soviet Union had 1.3 million Soviet and client-state troops poised on Western Europe’s doorstep, positioned for an invasion of Europe through the lowlands of Germany’s Fulda Gap.

How was this possible? It was possible because Joseph Stalin had pushed his armies farther and farther into the West as the German Wehrmacht collapsed at the end of World War II. In doing so, and in the process capturing nearly all of Eastern Europe, he ensured that the Soviets had no Western enemies within a thousand miles of Leningrad or within 1,200 miles of Moscow. This vast territory represented not only security for the Russian motherland (which enjoys no natural geographical barriers to deter invasion from the West) but also a potent staging area for an invasion of Western Europe.

The first deterrent against such an invasion, which Stalin would have promulgated had he thought he could get away with it,

Let’s get something clear from the start. In 1976, in his 20s, John Brennan was a card carrying communist who supported the then Soviet Union, at the height some might say of the Cold War, so much so he voted and assisted Gus Hall, the communist candidate for President against a devout Christian, Jimmy Carter who ultimately won the Presidency.

Yet under four years later, just after the then Soviet Union invaded, just weeks before, Afghanistan and months after the tumultuous Iranian revolution of 1979, which at the time many thought the Soviet Union had a hand in, Brennan was accepted into the CIA as a junior analyst.

At that time, John Brennan should have never got into the CIA, or any Western Intelligence agency given his communist background.

Think on that carefully as you continue to read this.

Also reflect on the fact that Brennan, later in his CIA career, was surprisingly elevated from junior analyst to the prestigious position of Station Chief in Saudi Arabia where he spent a few years.

Its said he was appointed purely for ‘political’ reasons, alleged to have been at the direct request of Bill Clinton and other Democrats not because of a recommendation or merit from within the Agency.

Its further said that the Saudis liked Brennan because he became very quickly ‘their man’ so to speak. Some reports, unsubstantiated, even allege Brennan became a Muslim while there to ingratiate himself with the Saudis.

Important to read is an NBC news article entitled ‘Former Spooks Criticize CIA Director John Brennan for Spying Comments’ by Ken Dilanian dated March 2nd, 2016.

The article contains many revealing facts and evidence, while giving a flavour, of the feelings of many in the CIA who felt that Brennan was totally unsuitable and unqualified to be Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

A final controversy is the little known fact of Brennan’s near four year departure from the CIA into the commercial world, having been ‘left out in the cold’ from the CIA, from November 2005 to January 2009 when he was CEO of a private company called ‘The Analysis Corporation’.

The Duran’s Alex Christoforou and Editor-in-Chief Alexander Mercouris discuss a recent Reuters report with a headline making an incredible claim of human rights abuse from the Chinese government: “U.N. says it has credible reports that China holds million Uighurs in secret camps.”

Turns out this headline was false. The United Nations stated it never said such a thing, or made such a claim.

Reuters and just about every mainstream media publication and television network picked up on the story and reported it as fact. No retraction has been submitted by Reuters, or any other news publication for that matter.

As Ajit Singh from Global Research writes, “one American member of an independent UN body made a provocative claim that China was interning 1 million Muslims, but failed to provide a single named source. And Reuters and the Western corporate media ran with it anyway, attributing the unsubstantiated allegations of one US individual to the UN as a whole.”

Numerous major media outlets, from Reuters to The Intercept, have claimed that the United Nations has reports that the Chinese government is holding as many as 1 million Uighur Muslims in “internment camps.” But a close examination of these news stories, and of the evidence behind them — or the lack thereof — demonstrates that the extraordinary claim is simply not true.

A spokesperson from the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) confirmed in a statement to the Grayzone that the allegation of Chinese “camps” was not made by the United Nations, but rather by a member of an independent committee that does not speak for the UN as a whole. That member happened to be the only American on the committee, and one with no background of scholarship or research on China.

Moreover, this accusation is based on the thinly sourced reports of a Chinese opposition group that receives funding from foreign governments and is closely tied to exiled pro-US activists. While there have been many on-the-ground reports highlighting discrimination that Uighur Muslims have faced at the hands of the Chinese authorities,